The
Hancock Shaker Village, in Massachusetts, is one
example of America's many Utopian communities.Photograph
by Polly M. Rettig, Landmark Review Project, 1974

The Shakers were one of many groups establishing utopian
colonies on American soil during the 18th and 19th centuries.
There were hundreds of communal utopian experiments in
the early United States, and the Shakers alone founded
around 20 settlements. While great differences existed
between the various utopian communities or colonies, each
society shared a common bond in a vision of communal living
in a utopian society. The definition of a utopian colony,
according to Robert V. Hine, author of California's
Utopian Colonies, "consists of a group of people who
are attempting to establish a new social pattern based
upon a vision of the ideal society and who have withdrawn
themselves from the community at large to embody that
vision in experimental form." These colonies can, by definition,
be composed of either religious or secular members, the
former stressing (in the western tradition) a community
life inspired by religion while the latter may express
the idealism of a utilitarian creed expedient to establishing
human happiness, with a belief in the co-operative way
of life. The more familiar non-monastic religious communal
movements typical in Western society have generally originated
from a deliberate attempt among various Christian sects
to revive the structure of the primitive Christian community
of first-century Jerusalem, which "held all things in
common" (Acts 2.44; 4.32). This essay explores the origins
and development of the Utopian idea and its arrival in
the United States before giving examples of 19th-century
utopian colonies and some organizations on their ultimate
demise. The Shaker, Rappite and Amana experiments, as
well as the Oneida community and Brook Farm, find their
origins in the European Protestant Reformation and the
later Enlightenment.

The Greek philosopher
Plato (427?-347 BC) wrote the dialogue The Republic,
which involved the search for justice in construction
of an ideal state.Plato (resembling
Leonardo da Vinci) is a detail from Raffaello Sanzio's
painting, "The School of Athens" painted
in 1510-11. Vatican Collection.

Origins of the Utopian Idea: The western idea of
utopia originates in the ancient world, where legends of
an earthly paradise lost to history (e.g. Eden in the Old
Testament, the mythical Golden Age of Greek mythology),
combined with the human desire to create, or recreate, an
ideal society, helped form the utopian idea. The Greek philosopher
Plato (427?-347 BC) postulated a human utopian society in
his Republic, where he imagined the ideal Greek city-state,
with communal living among the ruling class, perhaps based
on the model of the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta.
Certainly the English statesman Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)
had Plato's Republic in mind when he wrote the book
Utopia (Greek ou, not + topos, a place)
in 1516. Describing a perfect political and social system
on an imaginary island, the term "Utopia" has since entered
the English language meaning any place, State, or situation
of ideal perfection. Both the desire for an Edenic Utopia
and an attempt to start over in "unspoiled" America merged
in the minds of several religious and secular European groups
and societies.

The 19th-century utopian sects can trace their roots
back to the Protestant Reformation. Following the early
Christian communities, communal living developed largely
within a monastic context, which was created by Saint
Benedict of Nursia (480?-543?AD), who founded the Benedictine
order. During the Middle Ages a communal life was led
by several lay religious groups such as the Beghards and
Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit. In allowing the
sexes to live in the same community these societies differed
from the earlier Catholic and Orthodox monasteries. The
Protestant Reformation, which originated with the teachings
of Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564),
changed western European societal attitudes about the
nature of religion and work. One of Luther's beliefs broke
with the medieval conception of labor, which involved
a hierarchy of professions, by stressing that all work
was of equal spiritual dignity. Calvin's doctrines stressed
predestination, which stated that a person could not know
for certain if they were among God's Elect or the damned.
Outwardly a person's life and deeds, including hard work
and success in worldly endeavors, was a sign of possible
inclusion as one of the Elect. These theological ideals
about work were stressed in the various American religious
utopian societies. The Shakers, for example, believed
in productive labor as a religious calling, and the Amana
Inspirationists saw labor as productive and good, part
of God's plan of contributing to the community.

In the wars and general disorder following the establishment
of Protestant sects in northern Europe, many peasants
joined Anabaptist and millenarian groups, some of which,
like the Hutterian Brethren, practiced communal ownership
of property. To avoid persecution several of these groups
immigrated to America, where the idea of communal living
developed and expanded. The first significant group was
the Ephrata Community (now a National Historic Landmark),
established in 1732 in Pennsylvania. Much of this community
was destroyed when Ephrata's members cared for the injured
soldiers following the battle of Brandywine in 1777. Typhus
set in, killing both soldiers and residents. By the end
of the century the cloister's vitality was gone. It was
not until the first half of the 19th century that a great
expansion of communitarian experiments took place on American
soil. Inexpensive and expansive land, unhampered by government
regulations in a time when progress and optimism shaped
people's beliefs, created a fertile milieu for the establishment
of utopian societies. Europe, in the early 19th century,
was emerging from a long history of religious and dynastic
wars, and America, in contrast, became a location where
people could start over, the "New Eden" that beckoned
colonists across the Atlantic Ocean.

The Great Awakening, a series of religious revivals that
affected every part of English America in the first half
of the eighteenth century, prepared the American soil for
numerous religious sects. In addition to the religious revivals,
new ideas on government and man's role in society began
with the Enlightenment, an 18th-century European philosophical
movement characterized by rationalism and a strong skepticism
and empiricism in social and political thought. These ideas
found reception among the drafters of the American Constitution.
Freedom of religion, guaranteed in the First Amendment of
the United States Constitution, attracted European groups
who were persecuted in their own countries. Arriving in
America, some of these colonists hoped to form Utopian societies,
self-containing religious or secular communities, agrarian
and largely communal in nature, far removed from the perceived
vices found in the overcrowded cities. While numerous religious
and secular utopian experiments dotted the American landscape,
the Shakers, Rappites, the Perfectionists of the Oneida
Community, the experiment at Brook Farm and the Amana Colony
of the Inspirationists were among the most famous. Some
exploration of their beliefs and history presents an example
of how these utopian colonies functioned.

The Shakers: Formally known as the United Society
of Believers in Christ's Second Coming, the Shakers developed
their own religious expression which included communal living,
productive labor, celibacy, pacifism, the equality of the
sexes, and a ritual noted for its dancing and shaking. A
significant portion of Shakerism was founded by Ann Lee,
in England (for more information see The
Shakers), from a Quaker splinter sect created in 1747
and lead by Jane and James Wardley. Ann Lee and a handful
of followers arrived in America in 1774. Ann Lee died in
1784, but her message spread through her followers and Shaker
colonies spread to newer communities. Containing 6,000 members
before the Civil War, these communities maintained economic
autonomy while making items for outside commercial distribution.
Intellectually, the Shakers were dissenters from the dominant
values of American society and were associated with many
of the reform movements of the 19th century, including feminism,
pacifism and abolitionism: an Enfield Shaker's diary, for
example, records the visits of fugitive slaves, including
Sojourner Truth. Their work was eventually redirected from
agricultural production to handcrafts, including the making
of chairs and furniture (for more information see Shaker
Style). Both the Enfield Shakers Historic
District, in Enfield, Connecticut, and the Hancock
Shaker Village, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts,
stand as two noteworthy examples of Shaker communities.
The community at Enfield, which began in the 1780s, peaked
from 1830 to 1860. In 1860 there were 146 Shakers in Enfield,
living in same-sex housing, working in its garden-seed industry.
The Enfield Shakers Historic District, containing 15 buildings,
has been recognized by the National Register of Historic
Places for its significance in reflecting the social values
and communal lifestyle of the Shakers. The Hancock Shaker
Village was considered the center of Shaker authority in
America from 1787 until 1947, and is today designated as
a National Historic Landmark. Four other Shaker Village
have also been designated as National Historic Landmarks:
Shakertown at Pleasant Hill Historic District,
Canterbury Shaker Village, Mount
Lebanon Shaker Society and Sabbathday
Lake Shaker Village, the latter is the sole surviving
Shaker community.

Brook Farm: Some of the secular utopian communities
in the United States found inspiration from ideas and
philosophies originating in Europe. Transcendentalism
began as a term developed by the German philosopher Immanuel
Kant (1724-1804) embodying those aspects of man's nature
transcending, or independent of, experience. Taking root
in America, Transcendentalism created a cultural renaissance
in New England during 1830-45 and received its chief American
expression in Ralph Waldo Emerson's individualistic doctrine
of self-reliance. Some Transcendentalists decided to put
their theories about "plain living" into practice. This
experiment in communal living was established at West
Roxbury, Massachusetts, on some 200 acres of land from
1841 to 1847. The Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture
and Education became better known than many other communal
experiments due to the distinguished

literary and intellectual figures associated with it. The
Brook Farm Institute was organized and directed by George
Ripley, a former Unitarian minister and later literary critic
for the New York Tribune. Others connected with the project
were Charles A. Dana and Nathaniel Hawthorne (both shareholders),
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, William Henry Channing,
John S. Dwight, and Sophia Dana Ripley, a woman of wide
culture and academic experience. Brook Farm attracted not
only intellectuals, but also carpenters, farmers, shoemakers
and printers. The community provided to all members, their
children and family dependents, housing, fuel, wages, clothing
and food. There was an infant school, a primary school and
college preparatory course covering six years. The 1846
fire disaster which burned the newly financed Phalanstrey
building, combined with further financial troubles, including
Hawthorne's suit against Ripley and Dana to recover his
investment in the project, brought about the end of the
Brook Farm community the following year. The Brook Farm
site is now recognized as a National Historic Landmark although
only a small cottage on the property is definitely known
to have been occupied by the Brook Farm community. Nathaniel
Hawthorne used his experiences at Brook Farm as the basis
of his novel The Blithedale Romance. The Brook Farm
experiment began with about 15 members and never contained
more than 120 persons at one time.

The Rappites: The Harmony Society, also called the
Rappites, were similar to the Shakers in certain beliefs.
Named after their founder, Johann Georg Rapp, the Rappites
immigrated from Württemburg, Germany, to the United States
in 1803, seeking religious freedom. Establishing a colony
in Butler County, Pennsylvania, called Harmony, the Rappites
held that the Bible was humanity's sole authority. They
also advanced celibacy and lead a communal life without
individual possessions, and believed that the harmony of
male and female elements in humanity would be reestablished
by their efforts. Under the guidance of Frederick Rapp,
George Rapp's adopted son, the economy of Harmony grew from
one of subsistence agriculture to gradual diversified manufacturing.
By 1814 the Society boasted 700 members, a town of about
130 brick, frame, and log houses, and numerous factories
and processing plants. Their manufactured products, particularly
textiles and woolens, gained a widespread reputation for
excellence, as did their wines and whisky. The Harmony Society
soon outgrew its markets, and after selling all their holdings
to a Mennonite group for $100,000 they moved to a new location
on the Wabash River in Indiana. Here again they built a
prosperous community, New Harmony (now a National Historic
Landmark), only to sell it to Robert Owen, a social reformer
from New Lanark, Scotland, and his financial partner, William
Maclure, in 1825. The Harmonists next returned to Pennsylvania
and built their final home at Economy (now called Old Economy
and recognized as a National Historic Landmark), in Ambridge
on the Ohio River. The Harmonists reached their peak of
prosperity in 1866, but the practice of celibacy and several
schisms thinned the Society's ranks, and the community was
finally dissolved in 1905. The surviving buildings of the
first settlement in Harmony, with their sturdy, simple brick
dwellings, the Great House with its arched wine cellar,
and the imposing cemetery and original town plan are today
a National Historic Landmark named the Harmony Historic
District.

Oneida Community Mansion
House, Madison County, New YorkPhotograph courtesy
of Oneida Ltd.

The Oneida Community: The founder and leader of the
communal Oneida Community, John Humphreys Noyes, was born
in Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1811. Noyes joined the Andover
Theological Seminary in November, 1831. Transferring to
Yale Theological College at New Haven, he became involved
with the nascent abolitionist movement. In 1833 he founded
the New Haven Anti-Slavery society and the New Haven Free
Church, where he preached his radical belief which laid
great emphasis on the ideal of perfection being attainable
in this life. His followers became known as Perfectionists.
However, Noyes's belief in "complex marriage" alienated
many of the townspeople in Putney, New York, where he was
living, and he left in 1847. Perfectionists practicing "complex
marriage" considered themselves married to the group,
not a single partner. Noyes moved his community to the town
of Oneida, in Madison County, New York. At Oneida, the group
practiced "Bible Communism." The skills of the artisan members
were channeled into broom manufacturing, shoe manufacturing,
flour processing, lumber milling and trap manufacturing.
The Perfectionists in Oneida held communal property, meals
and arrangements for the rearing and education of children.
They built the Oneida Community Mansion House, a rambling
U-shaped, brick, Victorian building which began housing
the community in the early 1850s. The Oneida Community Mansion
House is now listed as a National Historic Landmark. In
1874 there were 270 members of the Oneida Community. Misunderstanding
of the community, allied with traditional points of view,
inspired a 1879 meeting of ministers in Syracuse, New York,
to condemn the settlement. Eventual unrest hit Noyes' followers,
and Noyes fled to Canada on June 29 1879. "Complex marriage"
ended two days later. The experiment in their communal utopia
ended in January of 1881 when the Oneida community was reconstituted
as a joint stock corporation.

Middle Amana, one of the villages in the Amana
ColoniesPhotograph courtesy of
the Amana Colonies Convention and Visitors Bureau

The Amana Colonies: The Amana Colony in Iowa was
established by German-speaking European settlers who belonged
to a religious group known as the Community of True Inspiration,
which traces its origins to Himbach, Germany in 1714. Community
founders J.F. Rock (1678-1749) and E.L. Gruber (1665-1728)
were among many Europeans seeking a more meaningful religious
experience than they felt the established churches provided.
By 1842, the descendants of the original Inspirationalists,
living in the modern day state of Hesse, Germany, decided
to move to the United States of America. In September of
1842 a committee led by Christian Metz traveled to America
in search of land on which to relocate the Community of
True Inspiration. They purchased a 5,000-acre site in western
New York, near Buffalo, and by the end of 1843 nearly 350
Inspirationists had immigrated to the new settlement, which
they named "Ebenezer," meaning "hitherto hath the Lord helped
us." Feeling that they were too close to Buffalo, New
York, and the corrupting influence of cities, the community
moved again, this time to rural Iowa. After investigating
sites in Kansas and Iowa, the True Inspirationists selected
a location along the Iowa River valley about 20 miles west
of Iowa City, Iowa for the relocation of their community.
This site offered extensive timberland, limestone and sandstone
for quarries, and long stretches of prairie filled with
rich, black soil. Construction of the first village began
in the summer of 1855 and the new settlement was named "Amana,"
meaning "believe faithfully." Eventually a series of Amana
villages grew, living communally until June 1st, 1932, when
the members of the community elected to retain the traditional
church as it was, and to create a joint-stock company (Amana
Society, Inc.) for the business enterprises to be operated
for profit by a Board of Directors. This separation of the
church from the economic functions of the community--the
abandonment of communalism--is referred to by Amana residents
still today as "the Great Change" (see The
Amana Colonies itinerary for more information).

The Demise of the 19th-Century Utopian Colonies: Numerous
religious and social communal groups developed in the
19th century. By the end of the century even Theosophical
colonies, based off Madame Blavatasky's merging of eastern
and western mysticism, had cropped up in such places as
Point Loma and Temple Home, near San Diego, California.
Other groups included the Zoarites in Ohio, the Moravians
of North Carolina, and the followers of German-born Wilhelm
Keil, a Methodist minister heavily influenced by the pietist
movement, who founded colonies in Bethel, Missouri, and
Aurora, Oregon. Yet of all these utopian groups only the
Amana Inspirationists developed and built a network of
seven villages set in an agricultural region. They managed
to survive by modifying their system into two distinct
organizations, one secular and one spiritual. The Inspirationists
of Amana founded their communities with an agricultural
basis as did other communal groups in the United States.
Both men and women labored, although in Amana women's
work did not include trades and the ministry as it did
in the Shaker communities. Among the Shaker communities,
the only one to survive and remain active beyond the 20th-century
is the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community, in New Gloucester,
Maine.

Amana's past and future meet at the Amana General
Store in South Amana, now Fern Hill Gifts and
QuiltsPhotograph by Blanche
H. Schroer, National Park Service

While the 20th century witnessed further experiments in
communal living, the great wave which founded the 19th-century
religious and secular utopian communities had begun to subside.
Some of the 19th-century groups were established and depended
on the strength of their leaders, those which survived into
the 20th century had to alter their way of life significantly,
as traditional rural life evolved due to the industrial,
economic and scientific progress in the larger society.
General causes relating to the demise of these utopian colonies
have to be explained individually, as each utopian community
faced different circumstances. Overall, the conflict that
many of these agrarian or small craft communities faced
in an increasingly industrialized world may have contributed
to their demise, as did external hostility manifested in
the larger, surrounding society, often seen in inflammatory
newspaper articles attacking the utopian experiments. Generally,
most analysts of utopian experiments, from Charles Nordhoff
to Arthur Bestor, Jr., have found that religious utopian
colonies possessed a longer life then their secular counterparts.